PolledHistory - 8-15 Sep - Southeast Asia: Subregional History

 Hello! Nobody voted in the last week's poll vote, so I did a random wheel, and the subregion topic of Southeast Asia is the winner. 

 History is more mysterious than other subregional histories, especially in the BC years. By 200 BC, small somewhat unorganized civilizations formed south of China, such as  Vietnam, which is a very old civilisation.

By 200 AD, Southeast Asia was still a collection of lots of islands and Indochina (modern day Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, etc) without much large civilizations yet. To the north, the Han Chinese were already dominant. 

By the first few centuries AD, a Cambodian civiliztion called Funan grew in power, but declined soon by the 500s and 600s. The Malay Archipelago and the Philippines were still not as colonized. Again, we don't have much information on these earlier times.

Funan fell by the 600s and was succeeded by Chenla, another Cambodian civilization. The Malay Archipelago and Malaya (modern day Indonesia and Malaysia) were mostly a collection of small civilizations and clans.

The Srivijaya formed as a small Sumatran empire by the 650s AD. They quickly rose to power, taking most of Sumata and Malaya, as well as Western Borneo (Kalimantan). Chenla divided by this time. The Khmers started as a small civilization near Chenla by 800 AD. The Mataram, a small civlization in Java at the time constructed the Buddhist temple known today was Borobudur.

The Khmers eventually eclipsed the Chenla as the Cambodian superpower that would last many centuries. The thing about Southeast Asian history is that it would be rare one civilization completely dominated the entire subregion, though there were some certain civilizations close to that. This is possibly  because of its coastal nature.

By the 1100s, the Srivijaya began a decline and its territory was lost to another Malay civilization, the Dharmasraya. In the same century, the Khmer Empire began work on the Angkor Wat, a gigantic temple complex. Soon later, the Srivijaya completely fell.

The Phillipines remained without much major civilizations, at least known ones. The 1300s marked the formation of the Majapahit and Siam (a precursor to Thailand). By this time, the Mongols were the dominant force in China.

In a period of a few decades, the Majapahit took over a large portion of the Malay Archipelago, controlling the region there. Though prosperous at its peak, after the deaths of important individuals in the empire, it started to decline and fell by the 1500s, being succeeded by the Demak as the major Malay civilization.

The situation in Indochina remained similar, with the Khmers (which became Cambodia) and Siam. After Demak's fall, the Malay Archieplago and Malaya became without much empires, besides Borneo, under Banjar control. The Philippines were colonized by the Spaniards, which would foreshadow the colonization of Southeast Asia.

Then there was colonization. In the 1700s, the Dutch already had major control over the Malay Archipelago, specifically Indonesia. By the 1800s, there was little native empires any more, though Siam and Burma, as well as Vietnam, continued. 

By this time, the Southeast Asian borders began to look like modern ones. France colonized Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos) but Siam continued nevertheless, Britain took over Malaya and Northern Borneo and India (Burna too). World War 2 made the Japanese took over all of Southeast Asia for a few years, and after that decolonization occured.

Indonesia, Cambodia, and Burma would gain independence, with a few more coming soon. This subregion is marked with lots of displacements and is not my expertise, probably because of its "unknownness".

https://forms.gle/YvoRB6SfqVvr1CY29

Theme: Infamous Rulers

Why did I choose this theme?

Many certain leaders and rulers in history are infamous in their either ineffectivity or brutality or both. Let's see the dissappointing or shocking moments of history.


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